Adalynn

What did I just watch?!

Obviously, it's a psychological exploration of post-partum depression.

But I wouldn't classify it as either a horror or thriller...rather, just a drama.

Calling it a slow burner is an understatement.

Because literally nothing happens in this film.

It's just a low budget film that attempts to portray the psychological downfall of a woman who miscarries.

With bad voiceovers that are meant to be auditory hallucinations.

And some very mediocre acting.

Seriousness of the topic, aside.

This film is just way too slow and boring- even during it's "climax" (which is rather anti-climactic, to say the least).

I mean...the whole thing is based on character development.

But I never found myself actually caring about the main character.

Making it really hard to remain engaged with.

Perhaps it's because I'm not the target market for this kind of story...but I just found this to be a completely forgettable film.

Clock does a much better job of attacking the subject, than this film manages to do, in my opinion.

So maybe watch that instead.

2 out of 10.

This movie deals with mental health issues and uncomfortable parental tragedies that could be triggering for some viewers. Otherwise, "Adalynn" is a layered descent into madness that aims to put the viewer in the title character's shoes. Some may be put off by this, but the director really captures and illustrates the frustration and confusion Adalynn faces throughout the film.

At times, it's uncomfortable. Other times, it can be heartbreaking. Some parts may intentionally squeeze a chuckle out of you. But if there's a takeaway from this film, it's that it really calls out the real-life taboos about postpartum struggles mothers often feel like they need to keep secret.

This underrated thriller may divide audiences, but it's worth a watch nonetheless.

Ok.. this... an interesting journey into post partum depression. Hard to watch if you are a new mom... the lead actress did an ok job. Not understanding why dad would take a week long trip during this time. A mother with a newborn but not over tge loss of another child. The baby.. we never actually see and in some scenes is way to obviously fake.

I say slow burn because this movie is supposedly a horror film.. I guess no longer understand the genre because this isn't horror. It's maternal guilt portrayed in a hard to watch way. But again..I praise the acting of someone who has to carry an entire film virtually alone. Not good.. but not bad.

Horror is an excellent way of exploring things like mental health (Saint Maud), Grief (the babbadook) and in this case post-partum depression. It is something people don't talk about much, and was a great candidate for a film.

Unfortunately it didn't work. At all. The lead actress tried but the script was incredibly clunky and contained some of the worst dialog I have listened too in a long time. It was very stilted, very un-natural, and required the actors to over-act to compensate. Filled with cliches, and the entire thing felt mechanical, like the writer had tried to study humans from a distance through bad TV but had never actually had a relationship with one. You could basically see the calculations he/she had made about each line. The exposition was sloppy, and we constantly learn about the inner mental state of the character because she verbally tells us (through the gimmick of writing in a journal), which is a cop out to give information we should have been able to glean from the acting and visuals (but couldn't because there wasn't space for that).

I don't understand on any level why the writer decided to make the husband a paediatrician, it serves to make every subsequent decision make zero sense at all. He is a qualified medical doctor who knows that his wife has a serious pre-existing mental health condition, is off her medication, the danger that poses, and also knows full well the additional mental health risk from postpartum depression. A conference of other paediatricians is basically the most forgiving event you can imagine in terms of understanding why he would need to bow out. He was also stupid to commit to it, even if the baby arrived slightly earlier than expected. His reaction to her phone call admitting problems was just ridiculous

She then receives medical advice from her doctor, in a conversation where she admits having serious trouble and absolutely 100% shows diagnosable signs of postpartum depression, and despite knowing that she is alone and has a history of mental health problems he does nothing. This again makes even less sense when you think about the fact that the husband is a doctor, it is highly unlikely that he doesn't know her doctor at least professionally because he would have recommended him). On top of that again the dialogue just isn't like any medical conversation anyone has ever had with their doctor, the tone was wrong, the logic of the conversation was wrong, everything about it was wrong.

Even the baby was terrible, there are scenes where the baby is crying and coughing after feeding and you can see very very clearly that it is completely inanimate plastic baby, not even being moved by the actor. They choose silly camera angles to try and disguise it (but then cut to angles that make it obvious thus defeating the point).

The score was also amateurish, the logic seemed to be "something significant has happened, so let's accent it with a loud noise!". The highly discordant noises came in far too early and there is no particular build up in intensity, which there absolutely needed to be.

It was a terrible shame to lump the actors with this film. The script should never ever have been selected for production.

Lots of the other reviews here are from people saying it is too slow, or not "horror" enough. Personally I enjoy both jump scare and gory horror as well as interesting psychological horror, the pacing did not bother me at all. It just isn't a good psychological horror, or drama ,or anything else. Do not allow whomever wrote this script to waste your evening.

"Adalynn" is a really well done psychological thriller that is engrossing, anchored by a very strong performance by Sydney Carvill as the titular character.

"Adalynn" begins as Adalynn and her husband Bill return from the hospital with their new infant daughter. We learn right away (in consistent voice-overs by Adalynn and her actions) that Adalynn has some mental issues which seem to be getting acerbated due to post-partum issues. She convinces her husband to go to a conference, saying that she can take care of their new child, and he reluctantly does. But alone, Adalynn begins to descend more and more into instability which may be made worse by events, either real or imagined...

One of the things I like about "Adalynn" is that it doesn't try to trick us -- it puts its cards on the table pretty early on and while it takes some zigs and zags to get the ending, it's never dishonest. And that makes it far more intriguing and disturbing than it might have been otherwise. The performances are uniformly excellent, especially (as I mentioned previously) Ms. Carvill, who is on screen for almost the entire film. And I really like that the movie actually fully explains what's going on at the end.

Pretty strong recommendation on this one from me.